"Lord, quench this furious flame!
Arise, run, help, put out the same!"
On the bell which emits the highest sound in the peal of St. Mary's, at Devizes, are the words:—
"I am the first, altho' but small,
I will be heard above you all."
St. Helen's Church, at Worcester, possesses a set of eight bells, cast in the time of Queen Anne, with inscriptions recording the victories gained in her reign.
A recent traveller in Iceland saw in a village of that country a church-bell which had the inscription in the German language:—
"Aus dem Feuer bin ich gegossen,
Hans Meyer in Kopenhagen hat mich geflossen, Anno 1663."[36]
recording that it had been cast, more than two hundred years ago, by a German founder residing in Denmark. The great bell in the cathedral at Glasgow contains a statement of its having been cast in the year 1583, in Holland, and recast in the year 1790 in London; and a bell in the cathedral of St. Magnus, at Kirkwall, Orkney, records that it was sent to Amsterdam to be recast in the year 1682. Still more frequent than historical statements are scriptural sentences and religious admonitions.
The Burmese, in order to protect a newly-cast bell from being defiled by their European aggressors, have hit upon the expedient of supplying it with a threatening sentence. The bell is in a Buddhist temple at Moulmein. Besides an inscription in Burmese characters it has a sentence in bad English running thus:—
"This bell is made by Koonalinnguhjah the priest, and the weight 600 viss. No one body design to destroy this bell. Moulmein, March 30, 1855. He who destroyed this bell, they must be in the great heell and unable to coming out."